KOSOVO HUMAN RIGHTS FLASH #27
MASSACRE OF OVER FIFTY VILLAGERS NEAR
BELA CRKVA
Five Witnesses Describe Killings to Human Rights Watch

For further information contact:
Fred Abrahams (212) 216-1270
Holly Cartner (212) 216-1277
Jean-Paul Marthoz (Brussels) +32 2 736 7838

Five witnesses, interviewed separately, have described in detail
how Serbian security forces executed more than sixty ethnic
Albanian men in the village of Bela Crkva (Bellacerka in
Albanian) just hours after NATO bombing began in Yugoslavia
on March 24.

Human Rights Watch researchers in Kukes, Albania, interviewed
the five witnesses yesterday. The refugees' detailed accounts
were consistent with one another and matched the testimony of a
sixth witness given to a journalist from the French newspaper Le
Monde.

According to the witnesses, the killings took place on the
morning of March 25, some twelve hours after NATO began
bombing targets in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The
witnesses described in consistent detail how residents of the
village of Bela Crkva were forced to flee their homes at
approximately 4 a.m., an hour after Serb forces started burning
the village. The villagers fled into the fields toward Rogovo,
hiding themselves by the banks of the Bellaj (in Albanian), a
stream flowing from Bela Crkva to Rogovo.

In the early morning of March 25, Serb forces found the ethnic
Albanians hiding near a bridge where the railroad tracks crossed
the stream. The families of Clirim Zhuniqi and Xhemal Spahiu,
who were approximately fifty meters away from the main group
of villagers, were the first to be discovered. Twelve members of
the two families were summarily executed with automatic weapon
fire, witnesses said. There was one survivor: a two-year-old boy
whose mother had protected him with her body.

Nesim Popaj, an Albanian doctor from Bela Crkva, reportedly
tried to negotiate with the Serb commander, pleading with him to
spare the lives of the hundreds of villagers. He explained that they
were not members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA),
witnesses told Human Rights Watch, but just villagers who
wanted to work in peace. The commander responded by saying:
"You're terrorists, and NATO will have to save you."

During this discussion, the commander was stepping down on the
neck of Shėndet Popaj, the doctor's seventeen-year-old nephew,
who was lying prone on the ground. Abruptly ending the
discussion, the commander -- described by one witnesses as a
medium-height man, around thirty-five years old, in a green
camouflage uniform with three stars on his shoulders -- mowed
down Nesim with an automatic weapon in front of Nesim's wife
and three children, after which he killed Shėndet. The witness
noted specifically that the commander, believed by the witness to
be a captain, had a distinguishing feature: a recognizably
scrunched up mouth.

The Serb forces then separated men and boys as young as
twelve from the rest of the villagers. The men were told to
undress, in an apparent attempt to humiliate them in front of their
wives and children. The Serb forces, described by witnesses as
"special police forces," then proceeded to search the mens'
clothes and strip them of money, jewelry, and documents. One
witness reported that the men had to hand over their wedding
rings. The women and children were then told to walk along the
railroad track towards Zrze (Xerxe in Albanian), a village on the
Dakovica-Prizren road about a mile southwest of Bela Crkva.

Robbed of their possessions, the men were told to dress again,
and then to go to the nearby stream. At that point, Serb forces
opened fire with automatic weapons. The female villagers who
were walking along the railroad tracks told Human Rights Watch
that they heard a burst of gunfire, lasting for several minutes
without interruption.

Human Rights Watch also spoke with one man, who did not wish
to be identified, who claimed that he was shot with the group of
men near the stream, and survived. When interviewed in Kukes
he had bandages on his right shoulder, right arm and head from
wounds he said he had sustained during the shooting (to his right
shoulder), as well as some shrapnel wounds he had sustained
later while trying to escape Kosovo (to his head and arm).

In a detailed testimony that was highly consistent with the other
witnesses, the man told Human Rights Watch that a bullet had
struck him in the right shoulder, forcing him back onto the bank
of the stream. He was then covered by the bodies of several
dead men, he said, which hid him from the Serb forces who were
examining the bodies for signs of life. He told Human Rights
Watch:

I was lucky. I was in front of the group. I was shot
in the shoulder and flew into the stream, where I
pretended to be dead. About twenty dead bodies
fell on top of me. They then shot into the pile of
bodies to be sure they were dead... They shot
people one by one, but I didn't get shot because
they didn't see me.

Roughly ten minutes later, still hiding under the pile of bodies, the
witness heard another round of automatic weapons fire nearby.
Some thirty minutes after that, when the witness realized that the
Serb forces had moved on, he stood up and saw the dead
bodies of seven elderly people from his village, as well as two
persons unknown to him, lying in a field about a hundred meters
away from the stream. He then proceeded to walk towards Zrze,
where he told the women from Bela Crkva who had arrived
around 10:00 a.m. what had happened.

The witness' account closely matched the testimony of another
apparent survivor given to French journalist Nathaniel Herzberg
(see "The Refugees of Kosovo Witness Executions by Serb
Forces," by Nathaniel Herzberg, Le Monde, April 14, 1999).
This witness told Herzberg that the men were forced to undress
and then dress again before being marched to the stream bed,
where they were shot. He said:

It was then that they opened fire. I was thrown into
the water, and others fell on top of me. And then
nothing. Five minutes later, I heard another gust of
machine-gun firing, far away. After about 20
minutes, I moved. There were six survivors, but
four were wounded. I didn't have anything [I wasn't
hurt.] I think there were between thirty-five and
forty dead, of which four were my cousins.

According to other witnesses interviewed by Human Rights
Watch, who also wished to remain anonymous, a man and
several women near Zrze went back to the stream by tractor to
see if there were any other survivors. They told Human Rights
Watch that they found five or six men who were wounded near
the stream and brought them to Zrze. Two of the men later died
of their wounds, and it is unknown what happened to the others.
Two days later, on the Muslim religious holiday of Bajram, a
group of villagers buried the bodies in a field near the river. A
witness who participated in the burial told Human Rights Watch
that the villagers had to work two nights in a row to bury all the
bodies.

The massacre in Bela Crkva reveals a pattern of mass killings in a
seven-mile stretch of villages along the Dakovica-Prizren road
between March 25 and March 27. Human Rights Watch has
confirmed that at least forty male ethnic Albanian villagers were
killed in the town of Velika Krusa (Krusha e Madhe in Albanian)
on March 26 (see Human Rights Flash # 18, April 4). There are
highly credible reports from individual witnesses of mass killings
in the nearby villages of Mala Krusa, Celina, and Pirane.

One possible explanation for the spate of mass killings in this
specific area may be revenge for the past activity of the KLA,
which at times controlled territory to the northeast of Velika
Krusa in the direction of Orahovac. It is also possible that these
killings can be attributed to one particularly brutal group of
soldiers or police, although this is speculation.

List of Those killed in Bela Crkva on March 25:

1. Hajrullah Begaj (village Imam), 29
2. Murat Berisha, 62
3. Adem Berisha, 33
4. Hysni Fetoshi, 50
5. Halim Fetoshi, 70
6. Fatmir Fetoshi, 30
7. Ardian Fetoshi, 16
8. Fadil Gashi, 47
9. Musat Morina, 60
10. Zyraje Morina (wife of Musat), 55
11. Nesim Popaj (doctor), 36
12. Shendet Popaj, 17 (nephew of doctor)
13. Etihem Popaj, 40
14. Krashnik Popaj (son of Etihem), 48
15. Isuf Popaj, 65
16. Mehmet Popaj (son of Isuf), 46
17. Vehap Popaj, 60
18. Bedrush Popaj, 50
19. Avdullah Popaj (son of Bedrush), 16
20. Sedat Popaj, 50
21. Ifan Popaj, 40
22. Rrustem Popaj, 63
23. Mersel Popaj, 50
24. Sahit Popaj, 42
25. Behlul Popaj, 14
26. Nazmija Popaj, 45
27. Albani Popaj, 20
28. Agon Popaj, 14
29. Hysni Popaj, 38
30. Lendrit Popaj, 17
31.-37. Xhemajl Spahiu, 70 (from village of Apturush, he
and 6 family members were killed together with Clirim
Zhuniqi in first group of 12)
38. Eshref Zhuniqi, age 60
39. Fatos Zhuniqi, 42
40. Labinot Zhunici, age 17
41. Mahamet Zhuniqi, 65
42. Reshit Zhuniqi (son of Muhamet), 25
43. Qamil Zhuniqi, 72
44. Ibrahim Zhuniqi, 70
45. Abedin Zhuniqi, 36
46. Bajram Zhuniqi, 50
47. Qemajl Zhuniqi, 57
48. Hysni Zhuniqi, 62
49. Kasim Zhuniqi, 30
50. Mehdi Zhuniqi, 60
51. Ahmed Zhuniqi
52. Agim Zhuniqi, 55
53. Destal Zhuniqi, 65
54. Bilal Zhuniqi, 75
55. Shemsi Zhuniqi (son of Bilal), 52
56. Muharem Zhuniqi (son of Shemsi), 28
57. Qlirim Zhuniqi (killed in first group of 12), 40
58. Lumnije Zhuniqi, 39
59. Dhurata Zhuniqi, 10
60. Dardana Zhuniqi, 8
61. Dardan Zhuniqi, 5
62. Hysen Zhuniqi, 22

For further information contact:
Fred Abrahams: 1-212-216-1270
Holly Cartner (New York): 1-212-216-1277
Jean-Paul Marthoz (Brussels): 322-736-7838

***
This human rights flash is an occasional information bulletin from
Human Rights Watch. It will include human rights updates on the
situation in Yugoslavia generally and in Kosovo specifically. For
further information contact Fred Abrahams at (212) 216-1270
or abrahaf@hrw.org. To subscribe to the flashes, send an email
to donalds@hrw.org.
****